PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONTheater, television, and film actor Ashley Wood kicks off the evening with a piece by Colum McCann, “What Baseball Does to the Soul.” Jeffrey Schmidt, Artistic Director of Theater Three in Dallas, will read “Stranger on the Bridge” by Julia Heaberlin and “Ash” by Thomas Adams. Tony Award-winning Broadway, film and TV star Julie White will read “Leaving Cloud Drive” by Marjorie Kemper. Audience favorite G. W. Bailey, perhaps best known for his roles as Sergeant Rizzo in M*A*S*H, Lieutenant Harris in The Police Academy films, and, most recently, Detective Provenza on TNT’s Major Crimes, will read “West of Nowhere” by Harry Hunsicker.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONWilliam Middleton’s Double Vision: The Unerring Eye of Art World Avatars Dominique and John de Menil is the first biography about the influential couple known as “The Medici of Modern Art.” The Menils created an oasis of culture in their Philip Johnson–designed house, hosting everyone from Marlene Dietrich and Renée Magritte to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. In Houston they built the Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, and the Cy Twombly Gallery, and provided underwriting for the Contemporary Arts Museum. With unprecedented access to private family archives and personal interviews, Middleton has crafted a vivid behind-the-scenes look at the famous couple who shaped Texas culture and the 20th-century art world through civil rights support, art patronage, and public gallery innovations.

TICKET SALE DATESTWO TICKETS + ONE BOOK: PUBLIC / TWO TICKETS + ONE BOOK: DMA MEMBER / TWO TICKETS + ONE BOOK: EDUCATOR / TWO TICKETS + ONE BOOK: STUDENT / ONE TICKET + ONE BOOK: PUBLIC / ONE TICKET + ONE BOOK: DMA MEMBER / ONE TICKET + ONE BOOK: EDUCATOR / ONE TICKET + ONE BOOK: STUDENT Public Onsale: December 5, 2017 9:00 AM to April 6, 2018 8:30 PM

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONPromotional Partner: KERABestselling cookbook author, Emmy Award–winning television personality, and successful restaurateur Lidia Bastianich discusses her heartwarming memoir My American Dream: A Life of Love, Family, and Food. Raised in Pula, a formerly Italian city turned Yugoslavian under Tito’s Communist regime, her family is ultimately forced to flee to Trieste, Italy, where they spend two years in a refugee camp before moving to the United States—a hugely formative experience in Lidia’s life. Told with her hallmark warmth and gusto, this memoir details her close-knit family and her passion for food, which ultimately leads to multiple restaurants, many cookbooks, and 20 years on public television as the host of her own cooking show, Lidia’s Kitchen.VIP Tickets are sold out.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONThis event will pair two powerful authors exploring the border both in fact and fiction. In The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantú, a former US Border Patrol guard, makes urgent and personal the violence our border wreaks on both sides of the line. Cantú is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and 2017 Whiting Award, and is a former Fulbright fellow. Luis Alberto Urrea’s novel The House of Broken Angels is the definitive Mexican-American immigrant story of a beloved and ailing patriarch, Miguel Angel De La Cruz, who summons his entire clan for one last birthday party. Teeming with brilliance and humor, Urrea’s indelible portrait of a complex family reminds us what it means to be the first generation and to live two lives across one border.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONDanielle Allen was awarded a 2002 MacArthur Fellowship for her ability to combine “the classicist’s careful attention to texts and language with the political theorist’s sophisticated and informed engagement.” Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Allen’s Our Declaration reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text, combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration line by line with a vivid evocation of the colonial world. Bestselling author Andrew Solomon praises Allen’s 2017 memoir, Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A., saying, “In this narrative of freedom and incarceration, education and disadvantage, rehabilitation and punishment, Danielle Allen paints an unforgettable portrait of a cousin she loved. The pacing is brisk and novelistic, but the message is large and clear: we need urgently to reform the system through which we process juveniles who commit crime, because the current system perpetuates the very injustices it was designed to address.”

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONPromotional Partner: KERA
Beloved satirist David Sedaris returns for his ninth consecutive year with Arts & Letters Live to share new and unpublished essays, imparting his incisive social critiques and sharing his sardonic wit with devoted fans. Hailed as the “rock star of writers,” Sedaris has become one of America’s preeminent humor writers, with bestselling books such as Barrel Fever and Holidays on Ice, as well as collections of personal essays including Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day , and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. DMA Members enjoyed pre-sale access. DMA Member discounts are not offered for this program.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONNaomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” Born to a Palestinian-American father and an American mother, she grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her family heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling the world leading writing workshops for all ages, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity. She is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes; her work has been presented on NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion and on two PBS specials. Nye is a Lannan Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, and has received numerous awards for her poetry and children’s literature. At this event, she will debut a new poem inspired by a work of art in the DMA’s collection and juxtapose art in the collection with a live reading of her poetry.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONInternational bestselling author and art historian Noah Charney has been hailed as “the Sherlock Holmes of art theft” and is famous for his dynamic exploration of art crime. His new book The Museum of Lost Art explores the world’s most important lost treasures through an illustrated guide to art that has been destroyed, stolen, and vandalized. In constant demand as a lecturer, Charney gave a sold-out talk at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for his previous book The Art of Forgery, which was an Amazon #1 bestseller. Charney’s first novel, The Art Thief, was a bestseller in five countries and translated into 17 languages. He often appears as a presenter and guest expert on National Geographic and NPR.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONIn a narrative as mysterious as memory itself, Michael Ondaatje tells a vivid, thrilling story of violence and love, intrigue and desire, in his new novel Warlight. In London immediately following World War II, 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, find themselves parentless and in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth, who they suspect might be a criminal. A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn’t know or understand at that time, and it is this journey—through reality, recollection, and imagination—that is told in this magnificent novel. Among Ondaatje’s many recognitions, his novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize and was adapted into a multi-award-winning Oscar movie.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONAcclaimed author, French literature professor, and fashion historian, Dr. Caroline Weber returns to French high society with Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin de Siècle Paris. The book features three wealthy but unhappily married paragons of Parisian nobility, elegance, and style, who captured the attention of Marcel Proust and were the inspiration for his supreme fictional character, the Duchesse de Guermantes. Through masked balls, court visits, and nights at the opera, Weber escorts her reader into the daily lives of these women celebrated as living legends. Back by popular demand, Weber appeared at Arts & Letters Live years ago for her book Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTIONHuman rights advocate Clemantine Wamariya captures the personal aftershocks of war, displacement, and survival in her powerful memoir The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After. At age 6, Clemantine and her 15-year-old sister, Claire, were two of the millions of people who fled Rwanda in 1994 while over 800,000 people were murdered. She recounts with breathtaking clarity both the kindness and the cruelty she and Claire encountered while wandering through seven African countries for six years searching for safety and shelter. Upon receiving asylum in the United States in 2000, Clemantine and her sister worked to build new lives amidst fresh difficulties, but their lives took dramatically different paths. Wamariya holds a BA from Yale University in Comparative Literature. A powerful public speaker, Wamariya now uses stories drawn from her experiences to catalyze change and create community; she has spoken at the United Nations, TEDxYale, and the US Department of Homeland Security Human Rights Law Conference.